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Need help understanding the expression 見ざる聞かざる言わざる - domokun1134 - 2010-06-14
Obviously I know it means "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" by looking it up in the dictionary. What I don't quite understand however is where the "evil" part comes in. Also, the ざる form of verbs I'm not familiar with. Can someone shed some light? Thanks.
Need help understanding the expression 見ざる聞かざる言わざる - gyuujuice - 2010-06-14
http://dev.jgram.org/pages/viewList.php?s=%82%B4%82%E9&search.x=0&search.y=0
I tired searching for it but I couldn't find it on jgram. I think ざる is a really polite verb ending used my samurai or something. (Like でござる)
I'm sorry that wasn't too helpful. :\
Need help understanding the expression 見ざる聞かざる言わざる - Ryuujin27 - 2010-06-14
To get a real answer into this thread: it's 古文. Enjoy.
Need help understanding the expression 見ざる聞かざる言わざる - domokun1134 - 2010-06-14
Well, what prompted me to ask is that I just bought the t-shirt.
I knew what it meant just by the monkeys alone. I just didn't realize that it was originally a Japanese proverb. Cool. So it's just the monkey's names.
Need help understanding the expression 見ざる聞かざる言わざる - iSoron - 2010-06-15
domokun1134 Wrote:So it's just the monkey's names.ざる is a conjugation of ざり, which in turn is a contraction of ずあり. These days it's used mostly in proverbs and set expressions, like ~ざるを得ない. It means the same as ぬ and ない. 「見ない、聞かない、言わない」. It's not just the monkey's names.
Also, 「見猿, 聞か猿, 言わ猿」is just a pun; ざる has no kanji form.
Quote:What I don't quite understand however is where the "evil" part comes in.Maybe it comes from another form of this proverb (there are many, in many languages; nobody knows which, if any, is the original); maybe it's just the translator being too creative. A more literal translation is "see not, hear not, speak not".
Need help understanding the expression 見ざる聞かざる言わざる - Tzadeck - 2010-06-15
As it says in the Wikipedia article Ice Cream posted, it's really from the Analects of Confucius, "Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety." Sometimes there is a fourth monkey to coincide with the last part of the quote. It's really a Chinese proverb, just the monkeys are Japanese.
ざる is not from monkey, it's the other way around. ざる is from a negative verb, and portraying it as monkeys was just a pun.
"Which is contrary to propriety" sounds pretty dated, so people talking about it in English simplified it to "no evil."